Three companies that sell products meant to build credit, Self, Kikoff and Possible Finance, drew 10,307 CFPB complaints between October 2025 and September 2026, up 62% from 6,367 the year before, compared with 46.4% growth in all CFPB complaints. Self had the most (5,065); Possible grew the fastest, more than doubling to 1,532. The complaints are unverified.
How these products work
A credit-builder loan works in reverse. Self, for example, holds the loan amount in a locked account while you make monthly payments, reports the payments to the credit bureaus, and releases the money (minus interest and fees) at the end. Kikoff offers a small credit line used for its own store, with payments reported to the bureaus. Possible Finance makes small installment loans repaid over a few months and offers a credit card. All three are aimed at people with thin or damaged credit files.
The design creates a particular risk. Because the whole point is reporting to the bureaus, a missed payment or a disputed balance shows up on the credit file the customer was trying to improve, and an unpaid account can be sent to collections.
Complaints by company
| Company | Complaints, Oct 2025-Sep 2026 | Oct 2024-Sep 2025 | Change | Vs. all complaints (+46.4%) | Top product | Top issue |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Self | 5,065 | 3,572 | +41.8% | -4.6 pts | Credit reporting or other personal consumer reports | Incorrect information on your report |
| Kikoff | 3,710 | 2,152 | +72.4% | +26.0 pts | Credit reporting or other personal consumer reports | Incorrect information on your report |
| Possible Finance | 1,532 | 643 | +138.3% | +91.9 pts | Debt collection | Incorrect information on your report |
Company names are shown in plain form; the CSV also gives the exact name each company is filed under in the CFPB database. Top product and top issue are for October 2025 to September 2026. "n/a" means the company had no complaints in the earlier period.
What the complaints are about
That risk shows in the data. For all three companies, the most common product named was credit reporting or debt collection, not the loan or card. Debt collection complaints rose sharply: Self from 731 to 1,722, Kikoff from 485 to 1,402 and Possible from 206 to 800. Credit reporting complaints about the three rose from 4,165 to 5,358.
Debt collection complaints across the whole database rose 29%, so the increase at these three companies was much faster than average. A consumer can name the original lender in a collection complaint even when a separate agency is collecting, and the CFPB does not check which company is responsible.
What these numbers are
These are complaints, not findings. The CFPB forwards each complaint to the company and publishes it, but it does not verify the facts in it. One person can file several complaints, and the product and issue are the categories the consumer picked. A company's count also depends on how many customers it has, so a large lender will draw more complaints than a small one without being worse.
The baseline matters. All complaints to the CFPB rose 46.4%, from 4,800,965 to 7,026,722, between the two 12-month periods, and most of that growth was in credit reporting. A company whose complaints grew by less than 46% lost ground against the database as a whole, even if its own count went up. The "vs. all complaints" column shows the gap in percentage points.
Source
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Consumer Complaint Database, complaints received October 1, 2025 through September 30, 2026 and October 1, 2024 through September 30, 2025, filtered by the company name as the CFPB lists it, queried through the public API on October 23, 2026. U.S. government data in the public domain. Changes, shares and comparisons with the all-complaints baseline are our calculations. Our tables are available under CC BY 4.0. Credit "My Credit Guide (mycreditguide.org)".
Steven Reynolds, "Credit-Builder Loan and Card Complaints by Company," My Credit Guide, October 23, 2026, https://mycreditguide.org/data/credit-builder-complaints/.